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TechnoratiThose and other human rights issues trouble advocates, but they emphasize Clinton's very public remarks regarding China.
"Part of her challenge diplomatically is going to be able to work on many fronts," said Amnesty International's Curt Goering. "The United States cannot be credible on any issue unless it remains credible on human rights."
He said Amnesty does not deny the need for pragmatism, but insists the United States must at the same time "signal it is serious about human rights."
Kumar, likewise, acknowledged the pragmatism argument but said Clinton could have delivered her message in closed-door meetings with the Chinese. He said her public comments on human rights were bound to inspire serious questions about U.S. intentions under Obama.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was asked this week about comments by the Dalai Lama, the revered leader of Tibetan Buddhists who fled to exile as Tibet's 1959 uprising against Chinese rule collapsed. The Dalai Lama said Tibetans were living in "hell on earth" because of Chinese repression.
"The United States respects the territorial integrity of China and considers Tibet to be part of China," Gibbs said. "At the same time, we're concerned about the human rights situation in Tibet."
Gibbs noted that Washington believes the Chinese government increased cultural and religious repression in Tibetan areas last year, and urged Beijing to engage in further negotiations with the exiled leader.
"We believe that substantive dialogue with the Dalai Lama's representatives that makes progress and brings about solutions to long standing issues is the best way to achieve true and lasting stability in Tibet," Gibbs said, in a muted response to the perennial and fundamental human rights sore point.
State Department spokesman Robert Wood also rebutted the criticism in response to a Washington Post editorial that said Clinton "continues to devalue and undermine the U.S. diplomatic tradition of human rights advocacy."
Wood said: "She realizes you have to sit down with, for example, her Chinese counterpart and make these points on human rights. But she also knows that's not necessarily going to get you what you want at the end of the day, so you've got to find new and creative ways to influence the human rights situation in China and that's what she's trying to do."
Obama and Clinton will likely face even stiffer criticism as they move forward with a policy designed to repair U.S. standing globally. They are trying to show world leaders that Washington is once again determined to engage the world through diplomacy rather than what critics saw as the Bush administration's tendency to rely on diktat.
The mission appears to be especially delicate when it comes to human rights, an issue that stands to block linkage with a number of countries unless the administration finds a way to finesse it by maintaining Washington's historic standards while not using them as a blunt instrument.
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